Patient Power

Jared Polis: what’s your real reason for pushing the “public option”?

Representative Jared Polis says the proposed government-run “public insurance option” is about trust. Some “trust an insurance company over the government and others who trust the government over insurance companies.”  If so, then why doesn’t Polis support a similar choice when it comes to Medicaid and Medicare?

For example, how about vouchers that Medicare and Medicaid recipients can use to buy commercial insurance?  Or a tax credit such that Medicare and Medicaid lost a dollar of tax revenue for every dollar a taxpayer donates to comparable charity?  Surely Medicare and Medicaid don’t fear healthy competition?

Maybe Polis does not advocate such choice because he, like other Democrats, ultimately wants single-payer medicine, where government is by definition the only option. At least Representative Barney Frank is so, well, frank. A popular on-line video shows him saying that the public option is “the best way to reach single payer.”

(This letter was submitted to the Denver Post)

• Barney Frank: “public option” is “best way to reach single payer”
• “Public option”: kept alive by health control bill?
• Polis calls for Senate to add “public option” to health care bill
• Polis’s suport for new gov’t run health plan: bad policy, bad politics.
• Michael Bennet’s lame support for “public option” via reconciliation